Casual mobile games worth installing

How to pick one

The useful question is not which game is best, it is what you want your hands and your head doing. Broadly there are two kinds here, and people tend to strongly prefer one.

Reactive games — Fruit Ninja, Doodle Jump — run on their own clock. The screen keeps moving whether you are ready or not, sessions are measured in seconds, and the appeal is that they need no thought at all. They are good for a queue and bad for a noisy room.

Untimed puzzles — Cut the Rope, Two Dots, Sand Balls and every one of our themed rulebooks — wait for you indefinitely. Nothing moves until you move it, you can stop mid-level and resume days later, and the difficulty is entirely in reading the board. These are the ones worth having if you get interrupted a lot.

If you are not sure, start untimed. A reactive game played badly is just noise; an untimed puzzle played badly is still a puzzle.

How long a session actually lasts

Store listings are not much help here, so this is measured from our own play. Doodle Jump and Fruit Ninja run thirty seconds to two minutes a round, and both expect to be replayed immediately. Sand Balls levels are under a minute. Cut the Rope and Two Dots levels run one to four minutes, longer if you are chasing every star. The genre pages on this site describe puzzles in the same band.

None of them needs a long sitting, and none of them punishes you for giving it one. That is the practical definition of casual, and it is a shorter list than the storefronts suggest.

Well-known games we have written up

Games most people have heard of, with the rules set out from a cold start.

1. 01

   Fruit Ninja

   The one to install if you want thirty seconds of nothing. Close to useless somewhere you cannot turn the sound on.

   Reaction slicer
2. 02

   Cut the Rope

   The one to install if you get interrupted. Levels hold their position indefinitely, and the three stars are the real puzzle.

   Physics puzzle
3. 03

   Doodle Jump

   For a queue, not a sofa. Runs end in under a minute and you will immediately start another.

   Endless jumper
4. 04

   Two Dots

   The longest sitting on this list. One to four minutes a level, and chasing every goal doubles that.

   Connection puzzle
5. 05

   Sand Balls

   The one you can play one-handed on a bus. Under a minute a level and no way to lose outright.

   Drawing puzzle

Smaller puzzle games, by theme

Puzzle types rather than specific titles — grouped by what they are about, because a dozen studios ship the same rulebook under a dozen names. All untimed.

1. 01

   Chicken

   A farmyard grid. Swap neighbours to line up three of a kind and meet the board's goal.

   Match puzzle
2. 02

   Airplane

   Draw a path from each plane to its runway and keep any two from crossing.

   Routing puzzle
3. 03

   Aviation

   Slide parked planes around a crowded apron until the way out is clear.

   Sliding-block puzzle
4. 04

   Fishing

   Move fish between tanks until every tank holds one kind. Untimed and quiet.

   Sorting puzzle
5. 05

   Ice

   Clear groups of matching ice blocks to free a penguin down to open water.

   Tap-to-clear puzzle

What we leave out

We do not write about games whose main loop is spending. If the first thing a game does is hand you a currency and a shop, the rules we could describe would be the least interesting thing about it, and the pages would be out of date within a month.

We also skip anything that cannot be played offline. Half the point of a casual game is that it works on a bus with no signal, and a game that needs a connection to open a level does not fit what this site is for.